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First woman in space: Valentina16 June 2013
Valentina Tereshkova was born in Maslennikovo, near Yaroslavl, in Russia on 6 March 1937. Her father was a tractor driver and her mother worked in a textile factory. Interested in parachuting from a young age, Tereshkova began skydiving at a local fly...

Today’s women in space16 June 2013
The assignment of women to space missions is no longer regarded in the same ‘historic’ way that it was in years gone by. In 2012, NASA’s Sunita Williams was only the second woman in history to command an International Space Station Expedition and this...

I see Earth - it is so beautiful21 March 2011
“The world’s first spaceship, Vostok, with a man on board, was launched into orbit from the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961. The pilot space-navigator of the satellite-spaceship Vostok is a citizen of the USSR, Flight Major Yuri Gagarin.”

More than two million first orbits18 April 2011
Since its release on 12 April, the film recreating Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight has been seen almost 2.6 million times. Much of the footage was shot aboard the Space Station by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli.